Halt and Catch Fire: Limbo
July 20, 2015 7:25 AM - Season 2, Episode 8 - Subscribe

Donna hints Cameron "Mutiny" might be more than a name sooner or later, right as the company users' picnic nears. Joe and Sara get married, and he informs Jacob about their life plans. Gordon Computers orders take off, but the company might not.

After returning from their honeymoon, Joe meets his ambitious replacement, and things get freaky on a disco. Cameron and Tom disagree about copy protection. Gordon and his co-workers disagree on having a future together as a company, and later has a surprise.

On Mutiny's picnic, Cameron discovers the numbers Boz put out are harsher than she expected, and learns the power of community... but also that of the businessworld.
posted by lmfsilva (3 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Well, this ended up nasty. Joe tried to do the right thing and seemed finally to put the mystery man behind him (fair to assume that at his point, he has been genuine for the most part this season, and less of a manipulative asshole?), and it backfired spectacularly.

Soooo, considering Mutiny was a load of holes security-wise, and Gordon couldn't be even arsed to hand out all documentation properly, what are the odds Mutiny will absolutely destroy WestNet? Mutiny barely survived the first round because they were a small company, and capitalized on a lot of good will. If the billings will start going towards a proper corporation (that will boot users owing hours), after their userbase in four different metropolitan areas is established, there won't be much good will as opposed to a crippling giant class action lawsuit.

This might have been one of the strongest episodes of the series yet as far as writing goes. Don't know if it will get a third season (Cameron and Tom and Mutiny become Amiga developers, move the Silicon Valley where they meet Joe again, and then Donna decides to bring her girls and Gordon?), but between HCF and BoJack Horseman I hope that when a show has potential, but failed because they couldn't get everything right from the bat (I'm looking at you, Fox and Almost Human), give them a second season, even if it's a shortened one, to see if they actually can fix what's broken.
posted by lmfsilva at 9:15 AM on July 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


The whole WestNet thing really bugged me. Sure, Cromwell's a bastard and the Big Corporation is Evil. Early days of online are like the wild west, sure. However, aren't there contracts involved? How could any business entity, however big, hope to get away with just rebranding a client's work and stealing their customer base like that?

That seems like a pretty cut-and-dried legal case, even if Mutiny has no money to fight a big legal battle. Our customers used to log into this system and see our stuff. Now they log in using the SAME ACCOUNT INFORMATION and see this other guy's stuff, and their bills now come from that other guy. We didn't give them permission to do that.

Unless, of course, there are no contracts involved. Time to get out the Gas Can Of Justice.
posted by chazlarson at 10:53 AM on July 25, 2015


On the one hand, I still disbelieve Gordon is the kind of guy who would break into places. On the other hand, that's the second time he's pulled a stunt like that, huh?
posted by ob1quixote at 6:22 PM on August 10, 2015


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